The Ash in Flashback
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Blood Brother tag: There was a reason they got close to Amelia and Benny.


**The "Ash" in "Flashback"**  
K Hanna Korossy

"Screwdriver," Dean asked, hand out expectantly.

Sam peered into the box of Dad's tools. "Regular or Phillips?"

"Regular." As Sam smacked it into his palm, Dean looked up, a small smile tugging at his mouth. "You remember, you used to call crossheads 'Pips' when you were little." Another pause. "So, like, last year."

Sam rolled his eyes. He might only be fifteen, but that was, like, twenty-five in hunter years. "You're hilarious."

"Why, yes, I am." Dean was grinning now as he unscrewed the front panel of the a/c. "Okay, pay attention, dude. Here's the condenser. And this part's...?" He raised an eyebrow at Sam.

"The condenser fan," he said obediently.

"Bingo. Now, here's the problem..."

Sam tuned out the explanation because, honestly, he knew all this already from all the previous times Dean had fixed air conditioners, heaters, radios, TVs, and anything else mechanical in the heaps they rented. When he'd been small, he'd lived in awe of his brother who could fix anything. Now...okay, he was still kinda impressed. He just didn't talk about it.

He'd only realized in the last few years that a lot of those fixes had kept them from freezing overnight, or going without running water, or all kinds of other important stuff Dad didn't pay attention to while they were growing up. Even once Sam learned how to do most of it, he still asked his big brother to take care of it. Of them.

"What's that part do?" he spoke up, pointing to the compressor.

Dean's eyes lit as he answered the question.

Sam didn't talk about it, but he knew how to say thanks.

00000

Sam was giving him the silent treatment, which usually drove Dean up the wall. But this time he was grateful for it.

It wasn't like he didn't know what the Great Brain was thinking about. Dean wasn't sure which part bugged his brother more, that Benny was a vampire they'd let go, or that Benny was Dean's friend from Purgatory, a friend he hadn't told Sam about. Probably all of it. And Dean was just fine with not having that talk right now.

Not that he didn't see the irony, he thought as he looked over at Sam's stony expression before turning back to the road. It'd been Sam who'd first introduced him to the idea that not all monsters were monstrous. First Lenore, but eventually psychics, "special" kids, ancient witches, some angels and gods and even occasionally the King of Hell: Dean had learned to judge actions instead of natures. And he'd learned that from Sam.

"Wanna stop for dinner?" he offered.

Hard silence.

Dean shrugged, kept driving.

Even Amy, whether Sam liked it or not. Dean had ganked her because she'd killed and would again under the right circumstances, not just because she was a kitsune.

He flipped the radio on, feeling a perverse satisfaction at Sam's jaw clenching at the too-loud strains of Kansas. Good. He'd seen Sam spacing out since he came back, and knew his brother was remembering _her._ At least if Sam was mad, he'd stay in the here-and-now.

One more of the many things he'd learned from his little brother.

00000

 _"Roberta, could you hand this man his trophy on his way out, please?"_

 _"Well, maybe if you were such an upstanding guy, you wouldn't have hit him in the first place?"_

 _"I knew there was something off about you, with your creepy Army-Navy and your sideburns..."_

Amelia had been kind of...unpleasant when they'd first met.

Okay, she'd actually pretty much been a jerk. But somehow he hadn't been put off.

 _"Let's see, what rhymes with 'Shut up, Sam'?"_

 _"You're like a walking encyclopedia of weirdness."_

 _"Sam Winchester wears make-up. Sam Winchester cries his way through sex..."_

 _"I'm the oldest, which means I'm always right."_

 _"Bitch."_

...Okay, so maybe he knew why he hadn't been repelled.

00000

He saw Sam watching out of the corner of his eye as Dean read the text on his phone and stuck it back into his pocket. Both hands back on the wheel, he counted silently to himself. _Uno...duos...tres...quattuor..._

"Was that Benny?"

One more second than he'd expected. Good for Sam. Dean looked over at his brother, torn between irritation and amusement, as he so often was with him. "No, actually. It was Garth. He wants you to stop being such a little bitch."

Sam's nose honest-to-god flared. It was kinda cool, in a masochistic way.

Then he saw the twinge of hurt in the kid's face, and even though he mostly deserved it, Dean didn't have it in him to keep it up. "He wants to know our 20."

There was a moment when it could have gone either way, then Sam accepted the olive branch with a jerky nod. "You want me to send it to him?"

"Naw, it can wait 'til we stop for the night. Just wanna clear Louisiana first."

Sam nodded more easily this time, and returned to looking out of his side of the car.

Dean couldn't help wonder if he was thinking about the chick or Benny.

Sam didn't get it. Benny had earned Dean's trust as a hunting partner. Saved his bacon a few times, didn't snack on Dean in his sleep, watched his back. It had been a gradual build.

But there'd been one moment in particular where he'd gone from companion to comrade.

The band of vamps had caught even Benny off guard. Maybe because he smelled vampire all the time, Dean didn't know, but one minute they were walking along in silence, the next they were fighting for their lives.

Dean was facing off against three, so he was kinda distracted, but he still heard one of the bloodsuckers circling Benny recognizing him. The offer for Benny to join them. The whack of Benny's machete in response.

Another minute and it was over, Benny disposing of the last vamp as it leaned over Dean, drooling. Next thing he knew, Benny was reaching a hand down to him.

"Y'all right, brother?"

No one had ever called him "brother" but Sam. Dean wouldn't ever have let anyone else call him "brother" but Sam. But Sam wasn't there. And the way this guy watched his six, stayed loyal even when he had a better offer...

He grabbed the vampire's hand, let it pull him up.

"Yeah."

The hand had been bigger than his own. Dean glanced down at the seat between them. Kinda like Sam's, actually.

00000

She told him about losing Don. And besides the sympathy, the empathy he felt for her, there was something else, too. A little easing of the loneliness, the grip of his loss.

 _"You have no one. I mean, at all, right? That's why you're here."_

That's ultimately what drew him to her: a fellow sufferer completely alone. Someone who'd loved someone deeply and lost him.

 _"You know what that's like, don't you."_

He wondered what Dean would think if he knew Sam had been drawn to Amelia because of him.

00000

They got ready for bed in silence.

It wasn't the silent treatment anymore exactly; Sam was still mad—uh, _yeah_ —but the lack of explosion had more of an air of withdrawal than punishment. _You don't show me yours, and I won't show you mine._

Dean was struck yet again by the irony of being back and still missing his brother.

There had been rare moments of peace in Purgatory. He remembered the three of them sitting by what Dean euphemistically called a fire. It was merely a pile of embers that wouldn't advertise their presence to everything in a mile, but rubbing his hands over it was still as warm as he'd felt since getting there. He never really froze, or starved, or needed sleep or to shave or even pee, which was just disturbing. But he was also never truly warm, was constantly hungry and tired and itchy.

"Lay it on me again," he'd said to Benny without a glance.

Benny didn't have to ask. _"Coniuncta sumus, unum sumus."_

 _"Conjuncta sumus, unum sumus,"_ he repeated. It seemed almost too simple for a spell that would let Benny piggyback on him out of there, but Dean knew better.

 _"Coniuncta,"_ Cas corrected him. "It means 'conjoined.'"

Dean raised an eyebrow at the vampire. "'We're conjoined, we're one.' Sounds like we're gettin' married, Benny."

Benny smiled thinly back. "I've missed ladies, but not enough that you're starting to look good, brother."

"Hey, I clean up nice," Dean shot back, but he was grinning. " _Coniuncta sumus, unum sumus._ You sure this is gonna work?"

"Got nothing to lose," Benny said with a shrug.

"Except Dean's life," Castiel the Wet Blanket put in.

"I'm in, Cas." He gave his old friend a sharp look. "We're all in. And all of us are gettin' out of here, no exceptions."

Cas looked worried. Benny looked faintly amused. And Dean...

He'd pulled his hands away from the mockery of a fire and tucked them under his arms., surprised at how much he'd meant what he'd said. Cas was a given, but Dean would also take this Cajun bloodsucker out with him or die trying. You did anything for family, anything. Dad had always said that, even though he didn't live it.

It was Sammy who'd taught him what that really meant.

"Turn the light off, huh?" Sam mumbled as he burrowed into his bed, snapping Dean out of the memory.

"Yeah, okay," he said quietly back. He did so, then gathered his kit and clean underwear and went into the bathroom.

He spared the mirror only the briefest disgusted glance. How screwed up was it that his brother was jealous of the guy Dean had only bonded with because of what he had with Sam?

Dean answered the text in the bathroom. Garth had indeed asked their location, but there had been another earlier text he hadn't told Sam about.

 _You still alive, brother?_

 _Still breathing, but in the doghouse,_ he typed back. He waited until the text was sent, then deleted both before turning his phone off. He tucked it into his kit and slipped back into the dark main room.

The stealth was probably unneeded; Sam was a silent lump buried under two layers of blankets in his bed. His breathing wasn't quite the rhythm of sleep—Dean was an expert in how Sam's breathing sounded, and yes, he knew very well how freakish that was—but it was drowsy, drifting.

Dean still stashed his phone as unobtrusively as possible in his duffel before climbing into bed.

He hated secrets. Like, with the kind of loathing he usually reserved for Dick Roman, or Yellow Eyes, or Ruby. It was Sam's secrets with Ruby that had nearly ended both their brotherhood and, oh, yeah, the world. Sam hiding his blood addiction. His soullessness. His return from Hell.

Dean had choked on a few himself over the years: his deal for Sam's life, Dad's final instructions, how horrific Hell had really been. But he'd never been able to keep it up, Sam's digging and Dean's own disgust with himself not letting them fester long. He hadn't meant to keep Benny a secret from Sam, fully intending to tell him until...

 _Did you look for me, Sammy?_

He closed his eyes and dug his face into the pillow.

If he'd been keeping secrets he shouldn't from his brother, Dean figured, he'd only been following said brother's example.

00000

The rustling continued from the bed, Dean obviously squirming to get comfortable. Good luck with that, Sam thought darkly. He knew all about the insomnia of guilt.

He'd spent the last _year_ trying to put himself back together with half his pieces missing. It hadn't worked all that great, but he'd still managed to cobble together some kind of life, some kind of new and abridged Sam Winchester. Then Dean miraculously returned, and one of the first things he did? Accuse Sam of not doing enough.

Yeah, well, screw him and the vamp who rode in on him.

He hadn't been there when Sam had contemplated driving the busted-up Impala off a bridge instead of fixing it. When he'd stayed in a motel bed for two days because he couldn't find a reason to get up. When he'd sobbed in Amelia's arms one night after dreaming Dean in Hell.

Dean of all people should have known the mind-breaking devastation of losing your brother. But he'd reproached instead of asked, blamed instead of empathized, and Sam had found himself responding in kind, anger and hurt overcoming relief and joy. His brother's caginess about Purgatory and his BFF Benny had led to Sam's own reticence about Amelia and the depth of his loss, his lostness.

And it sucked. He got Dean back, no souls bartered, no sword hanging over their head. And here they were, beds a few feet apart, miles between them. It wasn't too long ago that he'd have given anything, _anything_ to have Dean beside him again, and now they were barely speaking to each other.

It only took a moment's dip into those memories for the crushing sadness to return, his throat to clog and his nose to prickle. Sam sniffed, cleared his throat.

"Hey," he whispered.

A beat, just long enough to think Dean might not answer. "Yeah," came back cautiously, sounding as weary as Sam felt.

He opened his mouth, closed it again. He hadn't actually thought of what to say, just gave in to the need to say something. Why was it this hard?

A sigh from the next bed. "Yeah, me too."

His eyes burned a little. He rubbed them against the pillow in a nod. "Goodnight, Dean."

"G'night, Sammy."

It didn't really solve anything; they were back at it the next day. But it was the best night's sleep he'd gotten in more than a year.

 **The End**


End file.
